The great advantage of a wheel driven lathe is that continuous and controlled rotary motion is possible. This was not an automatic benefit to every aspect of woodturning though, as is illustrated by the continuing use of the reciprocating bow, strap and pole lathes. These ancient, simple lathes could still compete and perform efficiently in certain specialist areas such as small spindle and bowl turning.

Joseph Moxon (1683) put the wheel’s advantage as:

“Besides the commanding heavy work about, the wheel rids work faster off than the pole can do; because the springing up of the pole makes an intermission in the running about of the work, but with the wheel the work runs always the same way; so that the tool never be off it, unless it be to examine the work as it is doing”.

It is a drawing by Leonardo Da Vinci C.1480 that affords us our first glimpse of what an early treadle wheel lathe looked like. The main eliminates required for self-propelled continuous rotation is clearly shown, the flywheel, crank and treadle. It was the crank in conjunction with the flywheel that provided a huge leap forward in technological advance. The crank, linked to a treadle provided constant rotation whilst the momentum of the large flywheel ensured the crank was carried over its ‘dead spot’. The drawing also shows an adjustable tailstock with a threaded cranked handle. Leonardo is often attributed to the invention of the wheel lathe but I think it is more likely he was sketching something quite well known in his time. Indeed I think it almost certain that the cranked wheel lathe was known in Roman times.

One disadvantage of Leonardo’s lathe is that it only provided direct drive, so the speed of the machine relies entirely on the speed of the turner’s foot on the treadle, but it is beautifully simple and compact with its integral wheel. The next advance was to mount the wheel independent of the headstock and linking the two via a belt or cord, this allowed the use of stepped pulleys to be used. With this arrangement a number of gear ratios were available and could be chosen simply by moving the drive belt from one stepped groove, either in the wheel, the headstock pulley or both to another.

John Jacob Holzzapffel writing in 1881 describes most beautifully the advantages of the wheel lathe as follows:

“Flywheels afford the lathe two important advantages. Their momentum, equalizes the results of the varying muscular effort expended in driving them; storing up all in excess for the work load to be overcome, and parting again with just so much, as is necessary to carry on an equal revolution under occasional increased strain, and during the recurring periods of diminished effort. Thus, permitting a maximum of power to be conveyed to the work, with a minimum of fatigue to the operator.”

The positioning of the wheel exercised the minds of many lathe users and builders over the following centuries. Joseph Moxon, in 1683 illustrates the wheel, contained in its own separate frame mounted on the floor beneath the lathe bed. In contrast Charles Plumier in 1701 depicts a French lathe with the drive wheel fixed in a frame to the wall above the lathe. The frame was raised or lowered by a wooden screw to enable adjustment to the drive belt .It is interesting to note the Plumier lathe incorporates a spring bow that could be used in conjunction with, or separately to the wheel.

Even though the foot treadle wheel lathe was a great advance, for many forms of turning it still had it’s limitations regarding the size of object to be turned. For heavy work the ‘great wheel’ was developed. These wheels were often six feet (2m) or more in diameter and were freestanding, usually being some distance from the lathe itself. The drive was a large cranked handle, sometimes one on each side. One or two men were employed in turning the ‘great wheel’ as required whilst the turner was left free to turn such items as large table legs, Lignum Vitae Wassail bowls or wheel hubs.

A Great wheel lathe was illustrated in a nice little woodcut published in the ‘Book of Trades’ published C.1568 in Germany by Jost Amman. It depicts a pewterers workshop open to the street as was often the custom in medieval times. The ‘wheel turner’ cranking the great wheel can clearly be seen as can the Pewterer forming vessels on the lathe.

Although we tend to think of early lathe turning as the production of essential domestic objects there were exceptions. The treadle wheel lathe provided some members of the aristocracy with a hobby that some found as absorbing as any modern day turner. This section of society was more consumed with ‘ornamental turning’ and vied with each other for the most lavishly equipped machines. Ornamental lathes were very special; they allowed both the cutting tool and the object to revolve independently and at the same time. There was great competition amongst royal family’s to create ever more intricate and fantastic objects from exotic materials. As early as the sixteenth century the Hapsburg emperors were keen hobby turners, in Russia Peter the Great (1672-1725) pursued it with a passion and in France Louis XVI (1774-1792) was a great exponent and patron.

The Jurra region of France has long been a centre of woodturning and they devised some very ingenious treadle wheel lathes. One example consists of an upright wooden frame housing a lightweight spoked wooden wheel of approximately three feet (1 metre) diameter above a small lathe bed. This C.19th century lathe was designed for the manufacture of small turnings in Boxwood and Ox bone. It can be seen at the Art Tournage and Culture museum near Lons Le Saunier.

Geared cogwheels are rarely found in early lathes but I have seen two exceptions, one in France, the other in Romania. Although not ‘wheel’ lathes as such, they embrace the use of metal gear wheels to enhance the continuos revolutions gained by one turn of a cranked hand opperrated handle. Both examples appear to be wheelwright’s lathes for the turning of hubs for wooden wheels and would require two people to operate them, the woodturner and the handle turner.

Previous >> Part 1: Reciprocal Motion

Next >> Part 3: Mechanical Power

It does appear that the woodturners of old were content to continue with their tried and trusty traditional methods long after other sources of power were available to many of them. There were good economical reasons for this. No advantage was to be gained by expensive investment when the simple reliable technology of the strap, bow, pole and latter wheel lathes was usually just as efficient and more reliable.

We know that water driven lathes were used in some European countries during the last two hundred years or so. Plumier, in 1701 describes a water wheel powered metal turning lathe. In Bulgaria waterpower was used for turning the large diameter tops for traditional low tables. Bowls were turned in some alpine regions using this readily available source of motive energy. In the English village of Tintern early last century chair legs were produced on lathes driven via water wheels, probably a new use for a mill that was originally built to grind corn.

In Northwest England in the early nineteenth century the ‘Bobbin Masters’ of Cumbria had installed water wheels to drive lathes in their bobbin factories. This was in response to the huge demand for wooden bobbins required by the ever-growing cotton spinning mills of Lancashire, at a time when the industrial revolution was expanding fast. By 1854 the waterwheel at Stott Park bobbin mill had been replaced with water turbines. Turbines were much more efficient; they consisted of a large shaft-mounted propeller submerged in a duct through which the water flowed. The force of the water turned the propeller and shaft and by means of gearing drove the machinery.

An Englishman, Captain Thomas Savery built the first practical steam engine in 1698. Early steam engines were huge and developed to pump water from mines and later to drive heavy engineering machinery (including metalworking lathes) to produce machine tools. By the middle of the nineteenth century steam engines were to be found driving woodworking machinery in a few factories and even in specialist woodturneries such as the Cumbrian bobbin mills.

The first internal combustion engine was built in 1860 but it was many years before it was produced in small reliable units of sufficient power suitable to run a lathe or two. By the turn of the nineteenth century these ‘oil engines’ were employed in some small factories and woodworking shops, particularly those involved in ‘production turning’. James East of Chesham, Bucks, ran a number of wooden bedded lathes from a single engine via line shafting mounted in the roof space. The line shaft was kept in continual motion. The flat belt drive to the lathe could be disengaged as desired by maneuvering the belt from a fixed pulley onto a loose pulley (‘fast and loose’) using a simple lever.

As these oil engines became more reliable and compact (and cheaper) they also became popular with ‘one man band’ woodturners with small workshops. A case in point was Charles Dean, a Holmer Green chair bodger. Charles began turning with a pole lathe in the local woodlands. In 1924 he installed an oil engine in his back garden shed to drive a lathe and in addition a bandsaw and circular saw. Mechanization was at last within reach of the village turner! In the 1920s Charles friend Harry Tilbury immigrated to Australia. A letter from Harry to Charles dated April 1923 read “Guess the old pole lathe will soon be a thing of the past, haven’t heard that you had got the engine in yet, but I suppose it is to come. Guess a fellow won’t recognize the place if he happen to get back there?” How right he was, Charles son Alan used the same lathe until his death in 1982.

Garden rakes have been manufactured at the ‘Rake Factory’ in a small Kentish village since Victorian times. Little has changed over 150 years; most of the original machinery is still there and working, connected to the original line shafting. The old steam engine is long gone; it was replaced by a large diesel engine from a scraped lorry decades ago. One of the machines it powers is an unusual ‘rounding’ lathe. It consists of a wooden headstock within which is housed a wooden pulley and bearings. The drive-chuck end of the headstock contains a square recess to receive and rotate long squared section ash stock to be converted into rake handles. While the Ash stock is slowly turning a hand held ‘Stail Engine’ or ‘Rounder’ is fed over it from the free end and slowly coaxed along the complete length. This is a very efficient method of converting long, thin section square material to round. Close by is another, slightly latter rounding lathe. With this example the squared section timber is fed in one end, passes through a set of revolving knives and emerges through the other side completely round.

For the large majority of us today all that is required to run a lathe is to push a button and the magic of electricity does the rest. My first experience of woodturning was with a ‘Black and Decca’ electric power drill and the purpose made lathe ‘attachment’, all set up on the kitchen table. Electric motors provided a compact and powerful drive force and allow modern lathes to be built as complete portable self-contained units. Reliable electric motors have been available for about a century; I rescued a C.1910 1 hp motor from an old woodware factory some years ago that was used for driving a lathe. It is still in working order and linked to a lathe of the same period.

Many production lathes, whether driven by electricity or other power source were single speed only, By the middle of the 20th century self contained lathes with integral electric motors having stepped pulleys were developed, the Myford ML8 is a good example. It was ‘portable’ lathes such as this that made woodturning more accessible to the individual and hobby turner. Stopping the lathe to change the drive belt onto another pulley can be tiresome when there is a requirement to do so regularly. In recent years there have been several advancements regarding speed changing with out the need to stop the lathe.

Some time ago Poolwood introduced the ‘Poolwood 28-40’ incorporating a variable cone belt drive operated by a handle. This allowed the operator to change the running speed without the necessity to stop the lathe, but in doing so there is a small loss of power due to the extra gearing involved. This power loss problem and complex gearing has now been eliminated by the development of direct drive through the motor itself, the speed being controlled electronically by the turn of a small knob. At the moment this technology is expensive but I think it will prove to be the way ahead. In the mean time many of us will still be switching the motor on and off to change the spindle speed via pulleys and a drive belt.

Previous >> Part 2: Continuous Rotation

Next >> Part 4: The Machine Takes Over

Raymond Harvey, woodworker from High Wycombe

“These are my most important tools”, said my host, looking at two home made knives, one ground from a worn-out hacksaw blade, and an old ‘Surform’ rasp. I was standing in Raymond Harvey’s makeshift back-garden workshop, which reflects his general approach to his work, being a structure consisting completely of recycled materials. There, standing majestic in the midst of this ramshackle shelter is the most stunning four poster bed I have ever seen.

It is bedecked, one could say almost bejewelled, with the most beautifully coloured and grained exotic woods, all vying for attention. These are arranged in very precise geometric patterns reminiscent of the Islamic art of the Moors.

When asked about his apparent preference for the straight line Raymond pointed out that working with limited tools and equipment meant that introducing curves into his work was not practical. There is a small band saw used for converting stock and a pillar drill fitted with a sanding disc. Mitres are cut by hand using a mitre saw, then ‘cleaned up’ using a small belt/disc sander, that’s it! There is no jig saw, router or lathe on which to create that ‘third’ dimension, the curved line.

Ensuring the separate parts of the bed fit together

Simple carving is attempted using the knives, usually to cap the tops of panels to counter balance the otherwise linier approach, there are no carving tools in sight. The basic outline of these carvings is ‘nibbled-out’ using the band saw, after which the knives are used to finish the shaping. The Surform rasp is used to chamfer the edges of the raised panels. Asked about the process involved in producing one of his panels Raymond explained that he started with a sheet of plywood dimetioned to the finished size, and commenced from the ‘outside-in’,

“I never repeat a design, I like to create something different every time”.

He applies the first strips of wood to form a frame around the outside edge, and then fills in the remainder as he proceeds.

“I have no preconceived ideas” he said, “I do not draw a design on paper; all I do is draw a vertical and horizontal centre line on to the wood as a guide. Also, I do not work in feet and inches, I work using the printer’s measurement of ‘points and ems’, this gives me the perfection I look for when constructing my geometric panels. PVA adhesive holds everything together, and then, when I can afford It, I sand it all starting with 120 grit, followed by 240, 300, then finishing with 400 grit abrasive”.

At the time of my visit the bed was not completely finished, but I had seen, and stroked some of Raymond’s other creations and was surprised to learn of his simple recipe for achieving the superb finish that I much admired. One coat of raw linseed oil, diluted with four parts white spirit is wiped or brushed on to the surface and any excess wiped off. This takes some time to dry, but when cured is rubbed down with fine wire wool. Liberon Fine Paste neutral wax is then rubbed in and left for 24 hours, then rubbed-down with ‘wire-wool’ and buffed with a lambs wool mop attached to a power drill. This is repeated 7 or 8 times and can take as many weeks to complete; it is not for those in a hurry.

Construction relies on good mortice and tenon joints.

The frame-work of the bed is mortised and tenoned and secured using hidden screw fixings. Apart from the panels, the basic frame consists of solid Mahogany, much of which is salvaged oddments from the double glazing industry. Knowing how expensive exotic woods are, I asked how these were sourced and was told that most of them were off-cuts from a local electric guitar maker including some from an instrument made for Sir Paul McCartney. The species include; Ebony, Zebrano, Purple Heart, Walnut, Maple, Lemon wood, Wengi, Paduke, Lignum vite and Beech, there are approximately 30 species and nearly 10,000 separate pieces incorporated in the bed. Raymond said this had been a two year project and that he often works an 18 hour day, but there have been a few intervals of inactivity due to bad weather when rain water comes through the ceiling!

Being an orphan in his native Jamaica, Raymond was housed and taught at the Alpha boy’s school along with as many 7-800 others, the emphasis on teaching was on practical skills. First he learnt boot and shoe making, something that was in great demand at such an institution. After this he became an accomplished tailor, woodwork came next and was eagerly embarked upon until he was able to make, and French polish, reproduction Victorian furniture. The printing trade followed, this included the trade of compositor and litho plate making. Raymond also found time to play the trombone and baritone sax in the school band.

At the age of 21 one young Raymond Harvey arrived in England where he was confident that all these skills he had acquired would make him rich, he was wrong, there was a still lot of prejudice about in the 1960s.

“People judged a book by its colour he told me, but, they got it wrong, I was able to prove to myself I could create some beautiful things. The best thing I learnt about England was that each person is an individual, I did not know that! It did not occur to me that everyone is unique, I asked myself – if you are a unique person, how do you shine? Everyone out there has to shine, and to shine you have to be noticed. Some people commit murder and do bad things, I decided to create beauty, I will make anything in wood and it will be different, unique, like me!

The first work I did inside my house was an inlaid door in the hall, this was followed by completely panelling the kitchen, including all the units entirely with wood that was salvaged from sources such as builders skips”.

Today the whole house interior is decorated with Raymond’s individual approach in using wood to beautify his living environment. Carved figures incorporated in the panelling help to create a very special North African ambience. The fitted bedroom wardrobes are completely covered in parquetry decorated with symbolic ships, buildings and landscapes.

Raymond Harvey's wooden bed

From the outside Raymond’s Buckinghamshire house is rather non-descript and much the same as his neighbours, but enter through the front door and you are confronted with an interior one would expect to find in a large English country house. Raymond confided,

“I am the poorest person in the area but my house is like a palace, but, I feel my workshop is my palace, my heaven, I just go in there and everything just comes together.

I would like to teach and have written to many authorities including the government and the national lottery but no one wants to use my knowledge. I have special skills that I want to pass on to young people, especially underprivileged children, to show them there is something other than drugs and getting into trouble. I am willing to teach anyone but now I’m told that I am too old, at 63! I love England but maybe I will have to return to Jamaica to share my skills, I have a lot to share before I die”.